


Sawdust, Secrets and Symmetry

by PTlikesTea



Category: Cats - Andrew Lloyd Webber
Genre: Animal Abuse, Circus backstory, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-07-15 09:07:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16059944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PTlikesTea/pseuds/PTlikesTea
Summary: Their shared past is colorful, and only alluded to in passing. Turns out that might be for the best.





	1. Chapter 1

**Sawdust, Secrets and Symmetry**

 

I have no idea about the status of the CATS fandom so there's every chance this fic is going to be read only by me. But big shrug, I've developed an obsession that needs to burn itself to its natural conclusion. This is a sort of a prequel to a story that I may or may not write.

 

Enjoy, people who may or may not be me.

 

Caution: Some of the content of this fic is and will be graphic as regards injury and abuse. Proceed with care.

 

…..

 

Cats, Jellicle or otherwise, are well-known for being inscrutable. It forms a baseline for their personality, from the furthest-wandering tom to the laziest fireside cat. A cat one had known for years and years could still pull some surprises, should they feel the need to shake things up a bit.

 

What was unusual about Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer was that _'inscrutable'_ didn't begin to cover it. They were the only cats, it seemed, for whom getting closer only raised more questions. On the surface they seemed like just a rather careless sticky-fingered set of layabouts, but it was clear after a time that this was a persona they cultivated with great care.

 

Rumpleteazer once let it slip that she and Jerrie had been circus performers at some point, when asked why she was casually swinging from an old water pipe upside-down by her toes. At the subsequent excited questioning from the kittens, she refused to go into details, just made a rude gesture and sauntered away.

 

Everyone knew they had once worked for Macavity, but why they left when they were so obviously dedicated to petty crime was also unexplained. Jerrie did say, once he had been pinned down for long enough to give a somewhat straight answer, that they got bored. Too much planning, not enough mayhem.

 

It was an obvious lie, but was likely all the Junkyard cats would get out of them.

 

 _Aloof_ was not a word that could be used when talking about them, but they did hold themselves very separately from the other cats. Their den was on the outskirts of the Junkyard, one of the few big enough to hold the sheer amount of things they pilfered. It became a running habit for a cat in need of a gift to give to another, or something fancy to adorn themselves with, to go to their den. Whichever cat was there would happily hand over pretty much anything stored in the den, for once it had been stolen they tired of it.

 

“Are you sure I can just... _have_ this?” Alonzo once asked, turning over in his hands a ruby-studded bracelet large enough to be worn as a collar.

 

Mungojerrie shrugged.

 

“It looks expensive...” Alonzo mumbled, admiring the rubies glinting in the moonlight.

 

“It _is_ expensive,” Jerrie laughed. “We set off every alarm in that place trying to get it out...and they had this bloody great dog, jaws like a crocodile! Nearly bit my blimmin' tail off, it did!”

 

“Right,” Alonzo nodded. “And...you don't want to keep it?”

 

“Nah,” Jerrie waved him off. “What would I do with it now?”

 

Rumpleteazer was happy enough to squeal along with the rest of the queens whenever Rum Tum Tugger flashed a smoldering gaze, but flirtatious toms who got close were more likely to feel her claws raked across his face than a returned embrace. Curiously, even Tugger himself wasn't immune to this, as he found out when he crept up behind her to sneak a cheeky paw around her waist. And as for Jerrie, he didn't seem to have any interest in queens at all, besides Teazer. Or toms for that matter.

 

Were they brother and sister, or close cousins? Were they a mated pair? They seemed too free and easy to be mates, but too intimate to be siblings. They clearly had a long shared history together, but the details of which were probably lost to time.

 

If by chance you managed to get close enough, you could observe how Mungojerrie's left hind paw was slightly crooked and flatter than the other, and how Rumpleteazer had small, almost imperceptible patches on her back where fur didn't grow. How almost every pot, pan and vase they'd stolen and stacked in their den was stuffed with food that they would never get around to eating. How they'd stolen a perfectly good and rather fancy cat bed from some upper-crust's house but still chose to sleep in a bundle of rags near the den's entrance, summer to winter.

 

No matter how cluttered their den got, there was always three distinct paths cut into the mess to allow either cat to make a quick escape if they needed to. Escape from exactly what, was another one of those mysteries.

 

“She won't tell me anything,” Victoria whined to Jennyanydots during the time she had tried, earnestly, to make friends with the new queen. “I don't even know if she prefers mice or birds!”

 

“Leave it alone,” Jenny sighed, smoothing down the kittens' fur. “Anything they want us to know, we'll know.”

 

…..

 

Originally, it was supposed to be two black kittens.

 

Black kittens were easier to mistake for each other, even if they weren't the same size, or so the circus magician would say. From the audience stands, simply putting the same coloured ribbon around the cat's neck would fool them into thinking the cat in the box had been teleported across the ring into the other box in the blink of an eye. They wouldn't be close enough to see the differences.

 

No black kittens could be found in the usual stray colonies, but one of the carnies managed to find a tom kitten hiding under the big tent carriage after its mother had been killed on a nearby road. He kept it around, mostly out of sentiment, but had planned to leave it behind when the circus pulled out of the town. It was too brightly coloured to be of any use, except maybe as part of the clown's troupe, but they had no need of a cat.

 

About two weeks after, another stray kitten was found skulking around the colonies. Remarkably, it had nearly the exact same markings and colour as the other stray, though it was smaller and female. They were perhaps a week apart in age, not enough to make a big difference. Matching collars and the illusion would work perfectly. As long as they could train the cats to perform.

 

 _Training_ included being locked in the trick boxes for hours until they stopped making a fuss about it. It included being forcibly held down by the neck until they stopped trying to wiggle out of the magician's grasp. It included food deprivation, isolation, the occasional dunking in water and, one memorable evening, being dangled over the boa constrictor's tank by the scruff of the neck.

 

Eventually, the magician realized that his training techniques were less and less effective. Sometimes it seemed like the kittens were outright mocking him, deliberately messing up tricks they'd performed hundreds of times. By the time he got the idea to punish the other kitten for one kitten's misbehavior, the only thing that seemed to actually work, his act was dissolved and he was retired from the circus.

 

…..

 

“Look at this!” Mungojerrie said, tossing the little glass bottle into their designated bundle of rags and enjoying the way Rumpleteazer's eyes lit up with fascination.

 

“It's lovely,” she purred, tapping gently at it with her paw. “Where did you get it?”

 

“Ringmaster's tent,” he said with a grin. “It's that smelly stuff his wife puts on her neck.”

 

Teazer shrank back with disgust.

 

“He'll drop you in the snake tank for that,” she muttered. “She loves that awful stuff.”

 

“If he finds out. Which he won't.”

 

Even before his mother died, Mungojerrie had been considered a nuisance, an underfoot distraction preventing his mother from mating again, a helpless open mouth tiptoeing around the feral clowder looking for scraps. In the two weeks before they found the other kitten, he was practically considered meat for the stew pot, saved only by the soft heart of the carnie that found him but rarely looked at him since.

 

But once they introduced the new kitten, suddenly he was someone to listen to. Only a week or so older, but the way she followed his lead he might as well have been the great Rumpus Cat himself. It made him feel important. _She_ made him feel important.

 

When he first started pilfering, it was only things like old bits of rope or rusty screws, things to give her to sniff over on cold nights and guess where they had come from. But bits of rope and screws were in abundance, and the game wasn't fun enough, so he had to find new things. Unusual things. Things that would fire up that spark in her eyes that kept them both going on the worst nights.

 

Cautiously, Rumpleteazer licked the top of the bottle and immediately hissed and heaved. Mungojerrie gave himself a stomachache laughing.

 

…..

 

Circuses all over the country were in decline, and it was becoming common for the remaining big tops to be made up of refugees from the circuses that closed down. A newly hired clown troupe found use for the kittens, their propensity to deliberately mess up sets played into their act nicely. For a while, things were good.

 

Jumping through hoops and climbing ropes was easy enough, but the clowns put work into getting the kittens to extend their skills. They performed a dual act with the trapeze artists that went down a storm with the audiences, tossing the kittens from a basket into the air to be deftly caught by one of the acrobats. After a time, they managed the trapeze without the aid of humans.

 

(Fortunate, as the trapeze artists had quit over their low pay and dangerous conditions, and replacing them with the kittens was cost-effective.)

 

Watching the kittens perform aerial stunts was difficult, with them being so small. The circus worked around this by having one kitten work the double trapeze while the other ran up and down a suspended rope, handing over an increasingly ridiculous number of objects (finishing, usually, with a candelabra full of lit candles.)

 

For a while, they were counted as some of the circus' most popular performers.

 

…..

 

“It's easy! Watch!”

 

Rumpleteazer demonstrated just how 'easy' it was by jumping backwards on the rope, landing deftly on one foot.

 

“Easy,” Mungojerrie scoffed, fussing with his whiskers nervously. “That's a solid forty-foot drop, you know that?”

 

“You'll land on your feet,” she shrugged.

 

“Straight into the grave, yeah...” he muttered.

 

“You won't fall,” she soothed. “ _Humans_ fall. You're miles better than any human.”

 

He made a small hiss to himself and fussed with his whiskers some more. Much as she admired him, Rumpleteazer had quickly realized that Mungojerrie was full of brilliant and daring ideas but often backed away from them as soon as they were put into motion. All morning he'd been saying the tightrope would be the simplest thing in the world to master...

 

...and it was. For Rumpleteazer, anyway. She'd had a few stumbles but managed to hook her tail onto the rope to steady herself in the nick of time, and once she got past the first jittery feelings of plummeting to certain death she was tiptoeing back and forth like a bird on a telephone wire. Jerrie had yet to take a single step onto the rope.

 

“It's nearly food time,” she grumbled. “Are you going to take all night?”

 

“I'll do it, all right?” he snapped back. “Just working up the nerve...”

 

“Don't bother, you'll make yourself more nervous,” she cajoled. “Look, just hold my paw and come on. I won't let you fall.”

 

He made a face, but he also stepped forward a little, which was a good sign.

 

“Promise?” he mumbled.

 

“Cross my heart, hope to die,” she replied, holding up her paw to swear.

 

“Well, yeah, if we fall we will die,” he groaned.

 

“ _We won't fall,”_ she told him again, taking his outstretched paw and gently pulling him forward. “Trick is not to look down. Just look into my eyes.”

 

The first few steps on the rope, she could read the terror in his face like a book. All the same, there was trust buried in that look. Afraid as he was, he did know she wouldn't let him fall. Step by step, the terror faded.

 

“We're halfway there,” she told him.

 

“Blimey,” he muttered. “Nothin' to it, is there?”

 

“We got walking down,” she said. “Now we have to jump.”

 

“What? No!”

 

“No human is going to pay full price to see us just strolling across the rope. Once you've jumped it, you can do anything. Ready?”

 

“No, not ready! Stop...!”

 

“On the count of three...”

 

“Teazer, I mean it, I'm not doing it...”

 

“Three...”

 

“If you jump, I swear...”

 

“Two...”

 

“...I'll toss you in the snake tank myself...”

 

“...One!”

 

She jumped a good half-foot into the air, and he followed despite his protests. When they landed, the rope swung from side to side and Mungojerrie howled and hissed but kept his footing. After a moment, she got the rope back under control.

 

“You're a little sod, you know that?” Jerrie hissed at her.

 

…..

 

The circus had been struggling for a long time, most of its professional performers having retired or quit due to the shoddy equipment they had to work with. The clown troupe that worked with the kittens left for another circus in France but left Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer behind. They hadn't exactly been close, certainly not enough to be considered owners, but it still stung to be so readily abandoned.

 

To make up for the loss of performers, the manager and ringmaster tried coming up with new ways to drag in an audience. They resorted to shock rather than awe; a halfpenny freakshow, along with some hastily doctored stuffed animals they could claim were mythical beasts. Along the way, they made unscrupulous contacts. One of these gave the ringmaster the idea to use a trick that had thus far only been seen in the Far East, in opium dens and gambling houses.

 

It was dubbed the 'Kitten Dumpling' act.

 

The idea was that the kitten would be wrapped in a flour-salt-water dough, airtight and thick, and then dunked into an enormous pot of boiling water. They would be taken out when the dough was cooked, but the kitten would burst out, alive and unharmed, to rapturous applause.

 

In theory.

 

Timing was everything. They could only dunk the dough for forty-five seconds. One second longer and the kitten inside would be cooked. Too early and the dough would be too soggy to break through and the kitten might suffocate. If the dough had any holes, even minuscule, the hot water would seep through and boil the kitten. The ringmaster was not particularly sentimental about either kitten, but revealing a dead kitten to an audience was a good way to get a show shut down. They were determined to get it right.

 

During the test runs, they found that the two-inch difference between the kittens made the tom unsuitable for the trick, he tended to stretch the dough too thin. It fit around the queen perfectly.

 

…..

 

“Exactly what do you think you're doing?”

 

Mungojerrie jumped. Spinning around, and knocking over a large amount of glass bottles in the process, he found himself being stared down by a large and elegant tom. He hissed and squared up for a fight.

 

“Don't panic,” the tom said smoothly, with a hint of irritation. “You're obviously looking for something. You might as well tell me what it is.”

 

“I...I dunno...” Mungojerrie stammered.

 

Initially, his plan had been to grab whatever looked the most like medicine, but he had severely underestimated just how much medicine the pharmacy held.

 

“What are the symptoms?”

 

“Symp....what?”

 

The tom sighed.

 

“Whoever you're getting this for, what's wrong with them?”

 

“Oh,” Jerrie mumbled, thinking hard. “Well, she's really hot, like burning hot. She's shaking a lot, and she got sick everywhere...she's breathing funny and she can't walk...”

 

“Has she been in contact with extreme heat?” the tom asked, already rooting through some bottles.

 

“Yeah,” Jerrie admitted.

 

“Sounds like heat stroke then,” the tom informed. “Not much to be done, but I'll give you some cooling wraps and fluids. Hopefully it'll wear off without doing much damage.”

 

He even put the bottle and the bandages in a little basket for Jerrie to bring back. He nearly cried with relief.

 

The worst part about watching the trick being done was the seconds that inched towards the forty-five mark, wondering if this was the day they'd mess it up. The dough was a little too thin, and although Rumpleteazer had burst out of it as usual and taken her applause, afterwards watching her stumble out of the tent and collapse was a nightmare.

 

He went to help her, but could barely touch her because her fur felt like it was burning. A set of blisters were already forming on her back, where the dough had been at its thinnest. He left her under a cold wet towel while he went to raid the nearest pharmacy.

 

 _We need to get out of here_ he thought to himself the whole way back, repeated over and over like a prayer.

 

She was still lying where he'd left her, in the empty stock carriage they made their den in. She'd been sick again; quickly he moved the soiled rags out of the carriage and opened the bandages he'd been given. He pulled the cork out of the bottle and tried to turn her over.

 

“I got some stuff,” he whispered to her. “Supposed to make you feel better.”

 

She mumbled something quietly, it sounded like gibberish.

 

“I need you to sit up and drink it,” he said, trying to get under her to prop her up. “Okay? Just one sip, if you can keep it down...”

 

She mumbled nonsense again, and from what he could see in the dark she was staring at nothing.

 

“All right then,” he sighed, laying her back down.

 

He took as big a gulp of the medicine as he could manage, resisted the urge to gag, and carefully placed his mouth over hers. Mother cats sometimes had to do this to small and weak kittens, he recalled, and though Teazer would probably balk at the notion of being called small or weak, at that moment she was both.

 

She swallowed, coughed a little and almost seemed a little better already.

 

“Did I ever tell you that story about the Rumpus Cat? That barney he had with a whole mess of dogs in some park somewhere?”

 

She didn't give any sign she was listening, but he had a feeling she was.

 

“Right, so there was this dog, one of them with the squashy faces...” he began.

 

…..

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Sawdust, Secrets and Symmetry**

 

**Chapter Two**

 

Well, this obsession doesn't seem to be going anywhere so here's chapter two. Enjoy, people who are probably just me.

 

…..

 

“Three more shows. Just three more, and then we're gone.”

 

Jerrie knew she didn't believe him. He'd been saying it for too long.

 

Rumpleteazer had ended up with heatstroke twice now, and with Mungojerrie not doing any shows at all the lion's share of their allocated food was going to Teazer. It hardly mattered though because in the run-up to each show Teazer couldn't bring herself to eat and just gave her food to Jerrie, leaving them both on the edge of starving.

 

Jerrie was worried sick. Along with not eating, she was over-grooming bald patches into her fur and had pulled out half of her whiskers. She wasn't sleeping enough and when she did sleep, she had nightmares. If they left it much longer, she wouldn't be in any fit state to run.

 

The carnies were starting to eye Jerrie up for the stew pot. They'd already eaten one of the horses from the old show, the one who was too old to sell. The snake charmer had left and taken her snake with her, and he was still too small to make a proper meal, but in lean times while he wasn't working he was just another mouth to feed. He knew they were just keeping him around in case something happened to Teazer, and if he got much thinner he'd be prime material for the Kitten Dumpling.

 

They needed to leave. Soon.

 

But...

 

Neither of them remembered much before the circus. They had never had to hunt or scavenge, for all the hard work they had put into their acts they were given food and shelter. As bad as the circus had become, what was outside of it was unknown and frightening. They were hungry, but they still slept in the same bed of rags in the storage crate and it was warm and comfortable.

 

Three more shows. Three more would allow them to build up their strength, and their nerve. Just three more and they would be gone. He repeated it when three shows had gone, and then six, and then nine.

 

In the end, the decision was made for them.

 

…..

 

“Teazer! Wake up!”

 

She grumbled, worn out from yet another show and weak from hunger.

 

“We're going. Right now,” he hissed.

 

“Wha...?” she stammered, rubbing her eyes. “Right now?”

 

“Yes!” he hissed back. “Listen, I heard them talking...they're shutting down for good. They're selling everything they can and dumping the rest. The manager's going to run out on the carnies.”

 

She got up, with difficulty. She was still recovering from another bout of heatstroke, and her legs shook with the effort.

 

“I packed a few things,” Jerrie told her, nodding towards a handkerchief tied with a knot. “We'll make for the trees on the other side of the stream, if we make it that far they won't bother looking for us.”

 

“And what then?” she asked. It all sounded very good, but Jerrie's ideas always sounded good until they hit the first hurdle.

 

“We'll go to London,” he announced, beaming with pride.

 

“London? Why?”

 

“That old magic bloke was always banging on about how great London is,” Jerrie shrugged. “Why not? It's full of cats, I heard. Must be a good life for the having if there's so many.”

 

“How do you think we're going to get there?”

 

“We just follow the road,” he answered, a little annoyed at her questioning. “South, as far as we can. Once the roads get more crowded, we're in London.”

 

She didn't say anything more, but in the dark he saw her frowning, looking down at their bed of rags.

 

“If we don't go now, we're in the stew pot,” he told her firmly. “Manager is taking the animals he can sell, and that's not us. We should take our chances in the woods.”

 

Finally, thankfully, she seemed to agree. She tottered over to the crate entrance beside him, and they both peered out.

 

It wouldn't be their first escape attempt. They had always been caught before, by the yard dogs or the line strung up with tin cans around the campsite or even just the creak of the carriage door. They had been punished for those attempts, but there would be no punishments this time. They had to get it right in one go. The yard dogs were hungry enough to not just stop them but eat them.

 

But...

 

While Mungojerrie dropped silently to the ground below the storage carriage, Rumpleteazer tumbled out awkwardly a moment afterwards, hitting the dirt hard enough to knock the wind out of her. Beside the camp fire, he saw the ears of a yard dog prick up. They crouched, low and silent, until the dog seemed less alert.

 

“Get on my back,” Jerrie instructed, dropping the bundle.

 

“But what about...”

 

“Never mind that stuff, we can manage without it,” he told her. “You can't run, just hang on tight. Once we get to the trees we're free.”

 

She did as she was told.

 

By the time they passed under the tin can line and the dogs realized that they were on the run, it was too late. They were halfway across the bridge when the carnies discovered that they were missing, and when the first torch was lit they were already hunkered down in an abandoned rabbit warren under an enormous oak tree.

 

That first night was cold and drafty, but for the first time in a long time they slept soundly.

 

…..

 

Forest, field, farm.

 

Farm, forest, field.

 

Small village, farm, forest.

 

The road to London was a parade of sameness. They stayed off the road itself, as far from humans as they could manage. They were still useless at hunting, but crouching in tight corners and tiptoeing across tightropes had made them excellent thieves, and thieves prospered in these places. They stole eggs from bird's nests in the trees, sandwiches from field labourers, smoked meat from storehouses, pies from windowsills and milk from schoolhouses.

 

They had just about enough to feed themselves, but it was always risky. Sometimes they were shot at, sometimes they would be chased by a dog and forced to drop what they'd taken to get away. Mungojerrie got shut in the larder of a schoolhouse for an entire weekend, escaping out the window to the laughter of thirty small children and the screaming of their teacher.

 

They slept where they could find safety; old warrens and burrows, under troughs and in barns, in the ruins of ancient castles and in the foundations of newly-built houses. They walked by the road at night, all night, until they were too exhausted to go on.

 

When they were forced to stay in any one place, by weather or other circumstances, they resumed their old game. Whoever went out to get food always brought something unusual back with them, something to sniff and bat and wonder over. Old bones, strange flowers, pieces of cloth, ragged newsletters, a child's shoe, usually by the time they were ready to leave they had built up quite a collection.

 

Another element joined in their play; when Rumpleteazer raided a farmhouse for some turkey, she accidentally caught a piece of jewelry dangling from the water tap and the farmer's wife went into hysterics. Teazer found the whole thing tremendously funny and it stood to reason that the jewelry must have been worth a lot for the farmer's wife to have lost her mind the way she did.

 

After that, they made a concentrated effort to target items the owners found valuable. Whether they got them or not didn't matter, how much trouble they could cause in the taking did.

 

…..

 

“Pigeon. Definitely.”

 

“Too big to be a pigeon. It's a pheasant.”

 

“How would you know? You ever seen a pheasant?”

 

“'Course I have!”

 

“Plucked and cooked don't count, you never... _augh!”_

 

Their little argument was cut off with a rush of metal slicing through the air and hitting fur. Mungojerrie managed to keep his scream of pain contained to that one little yelp; a sound of distress would attract the local carnivores faster than the smell of blood. Rumpleteazer flattened against the grass, wildly glancing around for the threat.

 

“What?” she whispered, when she couldn't see what had attacked him. “What is it?”

 

“It's got my leg,” Jerrie gasped.

 

Cautiously, she crept across to the patch of grass that was holding Jerrie's paw. For a moment, she was confused. She couldn't see anything....

 

...and then something thin and silver shimmered lightly in the moonlight, and she tracked it to the ground. A wire, tied to a wooden stake, the other end wrapped tightly around Jerrie's paw, so tight it had cut into the flesh. The paw was bent at an odd angle, most likely broken by the force of the trap being triggered.

 

“Oh dear,” a silky voice sounded from behind them.

 

Teazer wheeled around and hissed in the voice's direction. _Someone_ had responded to the sound of an animal in distress, but they wouldn't find easy prey.

 

The fox simply chuckled lightly. Her black eyes shone bright in the moonlight, she was not a young vixen and large, full of sleek muscle. She was more than twice Teazer's size, and with Mungojerrie in no shape to fight it would be difficult to chase her off.

 

“You were fortunate,” the vixen said, licking her lips. “It's supposed to break your neck, not your paw. You went into it backwards. The rabbits usually go the other way.”

 

“Who put it here?” Teazer asked, backing away towards Jerrie, whose breathing was sounding more and more ragged.

 

“Poachers,” the vixen answered. “They'll be quite annoyed that you're not a fat little rabbit. Though I'm not so picky...”

 

She advanced, slightly, and Teazer hissed and swiped at her.

 

“Stay back!” she warned, arching her back in an attempt to look bigger than she was.

 

The vixen smiled, rows of yellow fangs glimmered faintly in her open mouth.

 

“I can wait,” she said with a little sniff. “The snare is unbreakable. If you want to get out of it, you'll have to chew the paw clean off. If you make it that long.”

 

A rustle in the underbrush, and she was gone. The air was thick with the scent of blood, and Jerrie was sucking in breaths frantically, wheezing into the darkness.

 

“Calm down,” Teazer told him sharply. “She's gone, but she'll be back. We have to get you out fast.”

 

“You're not going to chew my foot off, are you?” Jerrie gasped. “She said...”

 

“Never mind what she said,” Teazer hissed. “She's a wild animal, she doesn't know humans like we do. They have to have some way to get these things loose themselves, don't they? All we have to do is figure it out!”

 

That was all _Rumpleteazer_ had to do. Mungojerrie was in no state to do anything more than lie panting in the grass. Shock, blood loss, pain and panic had rendered him almost comatose. They were on the outskirts of the woods, without enough trees to cover them from owls or kestrels, and within sight of a nearby homestead reeking with the scent of dogs. The vixen would be back, and she wasn't the only predator in the woods. All around, beady eyes and twitching noses kept a vigil around them.

 

…..

 

Sixteen hours.

 

If they'd had any way of telling the time, they would have known that it took sixteen hours to get Mungojerrie out of the snare.

 

Rumpleteazer had tried chewing through the wire until her jaw hurt too much to continue. Then she tried pulling at the loop around the injured paw, but it wouldn't come loose. Finally she realized that the stake it was tied to would have to come up to loosen the wire, but it was firmly stuck into the ground. She began to dig as the sun was rising.

 

The vixen returned and tried to get closer, to see what was going on, but Teazer put up a furious threat display and she thought the better of it. A young kestrel swooped on Jerrie as he lay flattened in the grass, but all it got was Teazer's claws in its wing for its trouble. Gradually, the curious eyes and noses faded away as they realized there was easier prey to be had.

 

Just as the dogs on the homestead were being let out for a run, Teazer managed to get the stake out of the ground, and the wire finally came loose. Exhausted as she was, she still slung Jerrie across her back and dragged him to a thick tangle of roots under a sycamore tree, not enough shelter to be truly safe but just enough for Jerrie to recover so they could move on.

 

Mungojerrie slipped in and out of unconsciousness over the next few days, with only snippets of the time he spent there being registered in his mind. He knew that Rumpleteazer was keeping his wound clean, he woke up sometimes as she was washing him, and her face smeared with his blood would be a memory he would keep forever.

 

She brought him food. He couldn't remember eating it, but he could remember Teazer ripping it to tiny shreds so he could swallow easily. On the coldest and wettest nights she covered his body with her own to keep him warm and dry. When the homestead dogs finally found their hiding place, she hissed and screamed at them for hours until they gave up.

 

Eventually, Mungojerrie recovered enough to walk away from the woods, although his paw would never be the way it once was. He just counted himself lucky that he managed to survive at all.

 

…..

 

The journey to London had taken a long time, but they were still a long ways from fully grown when they finally made it there. Gradually the air became foggier and the birdsong and rustle of trees faded into the sounds of people and machines at work. It was an ugly, damp place, but for a cat it held the promise of a thousand hiding places, a thousand sources of food, a thousand different ways to live.

 

It was Paradise.

 

There was no need, really, to keep thieving. They could have lived a perfectly good life scavenging from bins like the rest of the city's strays, or alternatively they were still young and cute enough to be adopted by some wealthy family's children.

 

But by then, thieving had moved past a necessity and become a way of life. London's humans had a vast array of fascinating objects, things that smelled interesting or glimmered in the light nicely or made very comfortable beds. And the way they howled when either cat nicked those things was still hilarious.

 

One of their favourite tricks was a holdover from the circus trick of the teleporting box. One kitten would allow the human to trap them under a wash basin or a towel or a bucket, only to have the other one saunter out in front of them, fooling the human into thinking they'd escaped. They would lift the basin or towel or bucket to trap them again, and the one originally trapped would hide, waiting for their doppelganger to get stuck so they could trick the human again. Sometimes they kept it up for hours, to the despair of housekeepers across the city.

 

…..

 

“It smells awful.”

 

“Well, the woman who had it shouted like billy-o when I nicked it, so...”

 

“I don't care, I'm not eating that.”

 

“It's what proper Londoners eat!”

 

“I'm not hungry.”

 

“Sod that, you're always hungry!”

 

Rumpleteazer took another cautious sniff, batted at the mysterious 'stuff' leaking from the stolen pie, and backed away from it.

 

“I'm not _that_ hungry,”she sniffed.

 

“Like hell,” Mungojerrie huffed, yanking a chunk of eel out of the pie. “I'm not going back out, you can sort out your own supper.”

 

“Ahem...”

 

The two of them wheeled around in the direction of the cleared voice, knocking the pie off of the butter tub they were using as a table. It was an enormous cat, long and thin with sparse fur and a squint in one eye. He grinned at them with the few teeth he had left.

 

“Eel pie, is it? My favourite,” he said, sauntering forward to grab one of the chunks on the floor. “Although I didn't come here to break bread with you...I have a proposition for you two.”

 

They looked at each other. All things considered, they could probably take him in a fight if they worked together, but...

 

“I'm sure you know you've got something of a reputation around here. And in less than a month, impressive,” the stranger cat said through a mouthful of eel. “My boss has taken notice. He wants a word with you.”

 

“Boss?” Mungojerrie queried.

 

“I'm sure you've heard of him,” the stranger cat replied. “Goes by the name of Macavity.”

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Sawdust, Secrets and Symmetry**

 

**Chapter Three**

 

Note: I have never had so few views on a fic before. It's actually weirdly refreshing. I feel like that gif of Homer laughing in the cinema full of skeletons. This is great craic. Enjoy!

 

…..

 

Macavity looked exactly like the kind of cat that would disembowel you for speaking out of turn, but his voice and overall tone was so cordial that they relaxed in his presence (though not completely, _never_ completely.)

 

The 'interview' was taking place in what looked like a human's actual office, if the furniture had been made out of old tyres and wooden crates. It was remarkably clean, and he even offered them a chunk of salmon before asking any questions. (Mungojerrie gulped it down in half a minute, Rumpleteazer halfheartedly nibbled hers and pushed it towards Jerrie.)

 

“So, you two specialize in food hauls, I see,” Macavity said, removing their latest pilferings from the cloth they kept them in. “With a bit of trinket thieving on the side. What's your cut?”

 

They looked at each other, then back to Macavity, wordless.

 

“Hm,” he purred. “Let me put it this way...who have you been working for?”

 

“...well, we ain't been working for no-one here,” Jerrie began.

 

“Not since the circus,” Teazer added.

 

“So, you just stole these for yourselves?” Macavity prodded.

 

Two nods.

 

“Then the food I understand, pickings are slim around here unless you have guts,” he continued. “But why the trinkets? What use have you for them?”

 

“None, really,” Jerrie mumbled sheepishly.

 

“They just looked nice, is all,” Teazer whispered.

 

Macavity chuckled, shaking his head. That was human logic if ever he'd heard it, but they were kittens. They didn't have to make sense.

 

“'Nice' is an understatement,” he said, holding up a lavaliere so that the inset gems sparkled in the dim light. “I estimate this piece to be about five thousand pounds, more or less.”

 

“Oh,” Teazer muttered. “Should...should I give it back, then?”

 

Macavity barked out a laugh that made both kittens jump. It was a raspy, not unpleasant noise that nevertheless held a hint of menace.

 

“No, I think not,” he said, wiping a tear from his eye. “Let me ask you, how did the person you took this from react when you stole it?”

 

“Lots of bad words,” Rumpleteazer answered. “And screaming.”

 

“She hit me with a broom, but by then Teazer was out the window,” Mungojerrie added.

 

“And then she broke the window.”

 

“Am I to understand she thought the two of you were just one cat?” Macavity asked, winding the chain of the lavaliere around his paw.

 

“That's the idea,” Jerrie said with a shrug. “Teazer gets in first, gets the thingy and then hides while I distract the mark.”

 

“And once I get out, I distract the mark again so Jerrie can get out,” Teazer added.

 

“And we break a load of stuff on the way out to keep them busy,” Jerrie piped in.

 

“Very clever,” Macavity mused. “But still, I have to wonder...if the two of you have been doing this for as long as you claim, why have I not heard of you before?”

 

“We ain't been in London that long,” Jerrie answered.

 

They jumped (again) when Macavity barked out his husky laugh, that faded into raspy chuckles as they stared at him blankly.

 

“You're having me on, aren't you?” he said incredulously. “Not been in London that long? The two of you sound more cockney than a Pearly King on Guy Fawkes night.”

 

They looked at each other, prompting more laughter from Macavity.

 

“I dunno what that is, but it's the truth,” Mungojerrie said, shrinking behind the crate a little.

 

“The bloke that raised us in the circus, he was from London,” Rumpleteazer explained. “He was always banging on about how great it was, we thought we'd give it a try. Guess we picked up something from him.”

 

“I'll say,” Macavity said. “You sound more London than cats who've lived here their entire lives. Well, no matter. I am quite satisfied I have work for you, if you're willing.”

 

They both nodded. They hadn't been around long enough to hear the stories of Macavity's dealings, and they had nothing to lose.

 

“Work hard for me, and you will reap the rewards,” Macavity explained. “A safe place to live, protection from other cat colonies and from humans, not to mention the dogs. Not the guard dogs, of course, you'll have to take your chances with them...food, catnip, queens...”

 

Rumpleteazer stiffened a little when she heard that last part, her hackles raised imperceptibly, but Mungojerrie didn't notice.

 

“...and anything you take that's not asked for, you keep. Sound good?”

 

Mungojerrie nodded, as did Rumpleteazer (but a little more hesitant.)

 

“Excellent,” Macavity purred. “But before I induct you into my ranks, I need you to pass a small test.”

 

…..

 

Macavity's 'test' was, to the kittens, ridiculously easy. He wanted them to break into some sort of human medical building and steal some clear pungent liquid in a small glass vial. The difficulties they encountered were easily overcome; Rumpleteazer ran across the telegraph line and slipped down the chimney as Mungojerrie distracted the Alsatians guarding the place, then she opened a window to let him in.

 

The building was deserted, and the only other problem they had was being told not to break any of the other vials of liquid while getting the one they needed. That was simple; they had been trained to handle all sorts of objects with care while preparing for their acrobatics shows.

 

Macavity was impressed, and let it slip that a previous underling of his had died in that same place when he shattered a vial. After that, he was confident in giving both of them the most complicated jobs he had going.

 

Along with the pettier things he wanted them to steal, food to stockpile and money and jewels Macavity traded and bribed with, he had them break into strange places to pick up things they'd never heard of and couldn't begin to guess why he needed them. Each location he sent them to necessitated a different approach and, over time, it seemed like there wasn't a building in London they couldn't get inside.

 

He sent them to police stations to grab folders and files, to publishing houses to steal notes from journalists. To hospitals and pharmacies for drugs and bandages, as the rest of his cohorts were prone to injury. Into science labs for mysterious chemicals and the natural history museum for ancient bones. On one unforgettable night he sent them into a West African community during one of their old rituals to collect blood from the sacrificed animal and a symbol on a piece of wood. What he intended to do with these things was his business and his alone.

 

Still, he left them ample time to fill their den with things they stole for themselves.

 

…..

 

“...if I'd known this place had no food I would've stocked up.”

 

Stuck on the highest shelf they could manage to get to, waiting for the night watchman to stop poking around with his torch, Mungojerrie's stomach strongly disapproved of their situation.

 

“We can stop by the Evening Primrose on the way back,” Rumpleteazer said, distractedly batting at a bottle of gelatinous liquid. “They've always got something left.”

 

“Right, but if this bloke gives up some time in the next hour, and it's twenty minutes to the Primrose...what am I supposed to do until then?” Jerrie moaned.

 

They crouched as the torch flashed over the shelving unit they were hiding in. They blended in quite well with the brown and amber glass bottles, but you could never be too sure of a hiding place.

 

“I don't know,” she whispered. “Take your chances with some of this stuff, if you want?”

 

She pushed a bottle towards him, and he sniffed it gingerly.

 

“Not bad, actually...” he mumbled. “Sort of sweet, it is...”

 

He pried off the cork and spilled a little onto the shelf.

 

“I was joking,” Teazer hissed. “That could be anything, don't touch it!”

 

“What's the harm? Humans take this stuff all the time, else it wouldn't be here, would it?”

 

He took a small experimental lick and grimaced, immediately trying to wipe the taste off on his fur.

 

“Well?” Teazer asked. “What's it like?”

 

“Blimey, it's like a bunch of old socks soaked in jam!” he coughed. “Bloody awful.”

 

Rumpleteazer sniffed the sticky puddle delicately and sputtered.

 

“That's worse than the old chicken blood,” she groaned.

 

“What do you reckon it's for?” Jerrie asked, moving away from the puddle as far as he could.

 

“Who knows?” she shrugged, already losing interest.

 

Jerrie moved back just a little too far, and two bottles tumbled off of the shelf to smash on the floor. They both crouched, but it seemed like the night watchman had moved on. Curiously, they peered over the edge of the shelf to the smashed bottles.

 

“Isn't that the stuff we were sent to grab?”

 

The bottle they had been ordered to bring back was safely wrapped in a handkerchief around Mungojerrie's neck, fastidiously secured with three sailor's knots. The broken one on the floor was identical, except for having released its powdery contents all over the bottom two shelves.

 

Rumpleteazer hopped down, followed a moment later by Mungojerrie. She sniffed at the powder from a good distance away, and Jerrie couldn't resist the urge to dip his paw in the stuff, admiring the way the little white flakes floated away from his fur when he lifted the paw.

 

“Doesn't smell as bad as the other one,” Teazer said. “Kind of bitter though...”

 

They made their escape shortly after, and once the bottle was delivered they promptly forgot all about the building, the night watchman, the disgusting liquid and the powder.

 

At least, up until the skin on the paw that Jerrie had dipped in the powder developed angry red sores that plagued him for days.

 

…..

 

By the time they realized that they needed to get out, it was too late.

 

Macavity, as he did with almost all of his recruits, had gradually eased them in and implicated them in so many of his plans that they were practically sleepwalking into the riskiest of jobs. They were excellent thieves, but Macavity had turned them into full-blown criminals without them even noticing.

 

(And yet, how were they to know? The circus had been chaotic and the road to London even more so; they simply didn't know any better.)

 

They were almost fully grown now, and noticing things they hadn't before. Like how Macavity's right hand cat changed on such a regular basis they might have only met the cat once before he was gone. How often cats just vanished and were never spoken of again. How the very few queens Macavity had under his control were kept locked away, and on those rare occasions when they were out of their dens they all looked like the life had been sucked out of them. Even Macavity's supposed favourite, a biscuit-coloured queen with long silky fur named Prunella, had that beaten-down expression.

 

Over half of the cats under Macavity's command had holes in their ears, missing teeth and scars all inflicted by Macavity himself, including the queens. Occasionally one of them would do something Macavity objected to, and the next time that cat was seen they could be missing an eye or a limb. They never heard Macavity raise his voice, but the whole colony could tell when he was angry; a tension hung in the air, and it was much too quiet.

 

Rumpleteazer was the one queen who was allowed to walk around freely, and only because she was still a kitten. That didn't stop some of the more aggressive toms from cornering her in hallways or trying to drag her into dark corners. Mungojerrie wouldn't let her out of his sight, but the fact that they felt free to try it on right in front of him was a huge red flag. At all times, unless they were on a job, she barricaded herself in their den.

 

She was overgrooming again, and plucking out her whiskers with stress, but wouldn't talk about it, even to ask Macavity to put a stop to it. When Mungojerrie confronted one of the more forward toms, he got a punch in the jaw and a threat to his life for his trouble. The only thing keeping them away from her was how useful she (and by that extension, Jerrie) was to Macavity's plans, and that Macavity himself disapproved of grown toms mating with kittens.

 

It was only a matter of time.

 

…..

 

“...decent cut on these emeralds, tarnish on some of these lockets, and the chains are cheap but only if you look closely...not a bad haul, all things considered,” Macavity said, inspecting the jewelery Jerrie had handed over.

 

Jerrie said nothing. A particularly forceful tom had been lingering near the entryway to the main lair and Rumpleteazer spun on her heel at the sight of him to go back to the den, leaving Mungojerrie to hand over the goods by himself. He didn't like being separated from her under any circumstances, it made him irritable.

 

Not to mention it soured the good feeling of pulling off a jewelry store robbery as quickly and efficiently as they had.

 

“Did you run into any trouble?” Macavity asked with a conversational air, inspecting a handful of rings.

 

“They had some dogs guarding the front door, but Teazer lead them on a chase and I snuck in the back,” Jerrie answered. “She broke a load of them glass cabinets, I reckon if I came in on the back of a horse they wouldn't have noticed...”

 

Macavity chuckled. He liked to hear about them destroying property on their jobs. Possibly because he himself was such a meticulous criminal that he knew one of their robberies couldn't be pinned on him. He turned back to his inspections, and for a few moments the only sound was the clack of claw on jewel.

 

“This shouldn't be in here,” he said suddenly, pulling out a string of pearls.

 

“Why not?” Jerrie asked. He'd grabbed whatever was in easy reach, more or less...

 

“These are fake. Too identical to be real pearls,” Macavity scoffed, swinging them carelessly on his claw. “They call them 'Woolworth pearls', anyone who shops at Woolworth's can afford them. They're cheap.”

 

“Oh. Sorry,” Jerrie said, directing his gaze to the floor.

 

“No matter, almost everything else here is top drawer,” Macavity shrugged. “One dud in the bag isn't the end of the world...”

 

“Erm, if you don't have any use for them, you mind if I keep them?”

 

“Knock yourself out.”

 

The pearls were tossed in Jerrie's general direction, and he was dismissed.

 

When he made his way back to the den, to the undiscerning eye it looked like Rumpleteazer wasn't there, but he knew exactly where she was. An old unused heating pipe bolted to the ceiling and covered by a wicker fan was her preferred hiding place when she was in the lair alone.

 

“S'only me,” Jerrie called. “I got something.”

 

The fan crinkled and her head poked out of the pipe.

 

“What kind of something?” she asked.

 

“Come down and see,” he answered.

 

Their game was more important than ever now. They needed the distraction to keep the never-ending fear at bay, and you could never tell when one of the many objects they'd taken for the game would come in useful. So far, the most useful thing either had found was the fan that covered the pipe. The den was stuffed with trinkets from all over London and beyond.

 

When she clambered down and settled in the old curtain they used as a hammock, he dropped the pearls into her open palm. She held them up to the light, examining them as carefully as Macavity had the far more expensive jewels.

 

“You got these today?” she asked.

 

“Of course,” Jerrie shrugged, hopping into the hammock beside her.

 

“Right, so somewhere near the back...” she mused, turning the individual pearls on the string. “Fourth cabinet?”

 

“No, you broke that one.”

 

“Oh yeah,” she muttered. “That one with the padlock on it?”

 

“No, but close,” he hinted.

 

“What, that barrel near the back door?”

 

“Yes,” he said, annoyed that she'd figured it out so soon.

 

“That's where they put all the costume jewelry. Is that why Macavity let you keep it?”

 

“Well, I'm not a blimmin' jewelry expert, am I? He called them 'Woolworth pearls', says its because they're cheap.”

 

“Who cares? Still pretty,” she said, winding the string of pearls around her neck and tying them in a knot, the way she'd seen humans do.

 

The pearls ended up being more useful than either of them anticipated. Rumpleteazer developed a habit of turning the beads when she was anxious or upset, and stopped pulling out her whiskers and grooming bald patches into her fur. She even seemed to sleep more easily with them on.

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Sawdust, Secrets and Symmetry**

 

**Chapter Four**

 

… **..**

 

“Okay,” the big silver cat sighed. “Start with...who told you about us?”

 

Mungojerrie was talking alone (again) and it was uncomfortable as always. He wished they'd waited until Rumpleteazer woke up, but that chubby spotted queen had given her some sort of medicine that knocked her out. They hadn't given the same draught to Jerrie, swollen as his front paws were they didn't really hurt anymore and just needed to be wrapped in bandages, but the black sludge Teazer had been coughing up worried them considerably more.

 

“A queen,” he mumbled, still numb with exhaustion. “Name of Prunella.”

 

…..

 

As far as Jerrie was concerned, he was still at least a few weeks away from adulthood when Macavity insisted that he spend a night with his favourite queen as a 'reward' for pulling off a tricky heist. Jerrie, frankly, was terrified.

 

“You don't have to do anything,” Teazer assured him, watching him pace around the den.

 

It was easy for her to say. Macavity had rewarded _her_ with a gold-plated figurine of a horse. Why couldn't he get something like that?

 

“Yeah, and if I do nothing she'll snitch and then what do I do?” he groaned.

 

“She probably won't snitch,” Teazer shrugged. “She seems nice. Nice for here anyway...”

 

In any other circumstances, Prunella would never have been called _nice._ She had a scornful look and her mouth drooped unhappily on the rare occasions she was seen around the headquarters, and there were rumours she had attacked and seriously injured other queens. That was probably why she was Macavity's favourite, because although she had once been very beautiful much of that beauty had been leeched away.

 

She looked him up and down when he was brought to her den (and the door locked behind them) and sighed.

 

“He sends me a kitten,” she sighed. “Of course he does...Sweet Everlasting....”

 

“Sorry,” Jerrie mumbled.

 

That got a laugh from her, dry and small as it was.

 

“Not your doing, I suppose,” she said. “Let's get this over with.”

 

She made an approach, but Jerrie backed away almost automatically. His hackles raised before he could stop himself.

 

“Don't worry, I don't bite. Unless you'd prefer that,” she said with a mocking grin.

 

He must have made some sort of face, because she rolled her eyes and lay back on her hammock.

 

“Fine then, how would _you_ prefer to do this?” she asked.

 

“I wouldn't,” he blurted out.

 

The words hung in the air, she stared hard at him.

 

_She's going to snitch. I'm in so much trouble._

 

But Prunella's expression softened, she seemed to relax and sink into her hammock.

 

“Just how did you get involved in all this?” she asked. “You seem a bit younger than Macavity's usual cronies.”

 

“Just sort of happened, really,” Jerrie sighed, relief making his knees weak.

 

“He got you hooked. That's what he does,” she told him. “Until you're in so deep you can't get out. I didn't think he'd started targeting kittens, but what do I know?”

 

“We weren't in London long, we'd never even heard of him...”

 

“We? Who's we?” Prunella asked.

 

“Me and my partner,” Jerrie replied. “We came to London together.”

 

“Is your partner a queen?” she asked, with a new note of tension in her voice.

 

“Yes...”

 

Prunella swore under her breath and rubbed her temple. She beckoned him closer, so she could hiss into his ear.

 

“I'm only going to say this once,” she hissed. “And you didn't hear it from me. There is a place on the other side of the city that has taken in Macavity's refugees in the past...they have some sort of protection over the place, I don't know...it's a junkyard. You need to get out, and soon.”

 

Just the _idea_ of running filled Jerrie with terror. He'd seen what happened to other cats who tried to run, even those just _suspected_ of trying to run. He tried to speak, but nothing came out.

 

But Prunella understood.

 

“Any cat that cares about a queen would never let her stay here,” she hissed, an edge of anger creeping into her voice. “You get her out. Get both of you out, however you can.”

 

…..

 

“I knew Prunella,” a timid queen who'd been hovering near the entrance of the den said, when Mungojerrie stopped talking. “She wouldn't have given out that information without good reason.”

 

The silver tom nodded, deep in thought. Faintly, Jerrie could hear Rumpleteazer coughing in her sleep from the next den chamber. Under his bandages, the bones in his forepaws gently ached.

 

“So then, what made you take the risk of leaving, if it was so dangerous?” the silver tom asked.

 

…..

 

“This isn't up to your usual standard,” Macavity said, holding up the bottles to the light.

 

He sounded bored, but that was just as dangerous as his anger. If he got bored with a cat he was more likely to send them on the most risky jobs or injure them for the pettiest of reasons. Jerrie shrank in on himself.

 

“I assume you have a good reason for this? I asked for ten bottles, did you suddenly forget how to count?” Macavity probed.

 

“I could only carry five,” Jerrie stammered.

 

“And what happened to the ones Rumpleteazer was carrying?”

 

“Well, you sent Coriolanus to supervise us...”

 

“And?”

 

“...he was hassling her, he wouldn't leave her alone...”

 

There. He said it.

 

It was bad enough when the toms harassed her at HQ, but once Macavity started sending his most trusted hench-cats to supervise their riskier missions it was a whole new level of awful. Coriolanus in particular seemed to think his position gave him some sort of claim over Rumpleteazer once she came of age, and he had a filthy mouth that he couldn't keep shut. He'd badly compromised the mission, alerting the guard dogs in the building with the amount of noise he made which lead to Teazer having to get them chasing her before Jerrie could get through to the broken window.

 

Macavity said nothing, but raised an eyebrow.

 

“...he got the dogs on us because he wouldn't stop talking at her,” Mungojerrie continued. “If he'd been quiet we could've both gone in.”

 

“I see,” Macavity said, quietly. He didn't _seem_ angry... “I'll have a word with him. A harsh one, I should think.”

 

Heady relief loosened the grip Jerrie had on his tongue.

 

“Actually, it's all of 'em,” he blurted out. “They keep grabbing her and trying to pull her away, they even come into our den looking for her...”

 

“Well, I'm sure you've noticed that we're not exactly swimming in queens here, Mungojerrie,” Macavity drawled, sounding bored with the whole conversation. “They find their fun where they can.”

 

“Yeah, I understand,” Jerrie said, though even the thought of this kind of 'fun' made him sick to his stomach. “But it's...putting her off her work.”

 

Appealing to Macavity's good nature would never work, he understood that much, but if his plans and profits were messed with he was almost guaranteed to put his foot down. Macavity hummed thoughtfully to himself. Jerrie fidgeted, desperate to be out of there.

 

“All right,” he said at last. “I'll see what I can do.”

 

Mungojerrie thanked him with more enthusiasm than he'd managed since the day they were brought there, and ran back to the den to share the good news. As usual, Rumpleteazer was in the pipe behind the fan. Instead of calling her down, he hopped in beside her.

 

“How'd it go?” she asked, idly playing with the pearls around her neck.

 

“Great,” he sighed happily. “Better than expected, actually. He's going to do something about Coriolanus.”

 

“What did you tell him?” she asked, her eyes narrowed in the dark of the pipe.

 

“Told him the truth, he's a dirty ol' perv who can't keep his trap shut,” Jerrie shrugged.

 

“You shouldn't have said nothin',” she groaned, sinking lower. “That fat bastard's one of his best cats. He's gonna blame me.”

 

“No, he won't,” Jerrie assured her. “I think things'll be better now.”

 

He was wrong, but he had no idea just how badly wrong he was.

 

…..

 

The old chubby queen bustled into the den, carrying a pile of rags and clucking gently in Jerrie's direction.

 

“Oh Munkustrap, couldn't this wait? Poor love needs to rest,” she said, addressing the silver tom.

 

“I won't keep him long, Jenny,” the silver tom replied with an affectionate smile, before his face flickered back to its stern countenance in front of Jerrie. “So what happened? Did he do anything about the toms?”

 

“Yeah,” Jerrie mumbled. “He put her in lockdown with the other queens.”

 

The timid queen that had been listening in suddenly rose to her feet and hurried out, making a little noise of distress as she did. The silver tom watched her, and for a moment Jerrie thought he would go after her, but he clearly thought the better of it and turned back to Jerrie.

 

“Lockdown?” he asked.

 

“He put all his favourite queens in lockdown, to keep the other toms from getting to them,” Jerrie explained as that awful sick feeling rose again in his stomach. “Which meant pretty much all the queens. He only let Teazer stay out for as long as he did because she wasn't old enough to mate with, but he had her picked out as a favourite from the first day. I just hadn't realized until then.”

 

The chubby queen quietly excused herself, and Jerrie noted the look of uncomfortable shock on her face. Even the silver tom looked taken aback.

 

“Macavity said I could handle my missions alone from then on,” Jerrie continued. “'Cept I wasn't much good without Teazer. We always worked best together...”

 

“Did he threaten you?” the silver tom asked.

 

“Not to my face, no,” Jerrie answered. “I did the best I could, 'cos if I didn't he might take it out on Teazer. But like I said, I wasn't much good without her...”

 

He trailed off, the distinctive sounds of a fit of coughing followed by retching in the next den grabbing his attention. Maybe it was a mistake to have done what he did...The silver tom cleared his throat.

 

“So, if she was in lockdown, how did you two escape?” he asked.

 

…..

 

The plan depended heavily on two things; his brain and her guts.

 

Mungojerrie would have to plot out the logistics carefully, because he would never get a chance to do this again. There was a hundred different ways it could go wrong, and a hundred more ways he could get caught before he'd put anything in place. Although time was against him, he had to work slowly, meticulously.

 

Rumpleteazer, for her part, would have to realize that there was a plan in place without ever having spoken to Jerrie about it. He was confident she would figure it out, and moreover be able to carry it out despite the danger.

 

His wit and her courage. It was a winning combination that had never failed them before.

 

Jerrie gathered the supplies and hid them all over the headquarters. Petrol canisters stolen from the local mechanics and gelignite taken from farm supplies, wrapped in newspaper, pushed through floorboards and crawlspaces. He positioned as many as he could away from the third floor, where the queens were held in lockdown. Well aware that some cats would die, he hoped to give the queens at least a chance to escape.

 

The third floor had a fireplace and a small chimney. Climbing it would be easy for Rumpleteazer, and the cats that guarded her in lockdown would hopefully be distracted by the fire long enough for her to get up there. From there, the roof was close to a telegraph wire that she could, in theory, walk across. That's if everything went perfectly.

 

The night he set the fire, he wished he'd had time to warn her about what he was going to do. He watched from across the street as the flames licked the building and cats flooded out, scattering in all directions. His eyes were rooted to the chimney, smoke billowing from it in a neverending flood.

 

Briefly, he heard Macavity ordering cats back inside to save some of his important things. His voice thundered with bitter rage, he asked if anyone had thought to let the queens out. He screamed at Coriolanus to get back in to unlock the door. Mungojerrie kept his eyes on the chimney.

 

After what felt like hours, a small black figure did emerge from the flue. Covered in soot and gasping for breath, she flopped across the roof tiles sucking in air. She rubbed at her eyes, and a horrified Mungojerrie realized that he had overlooked something; the effect the smoke would have on her sight. She couldn't see the telegraph pole.

 

“Teazer!” he yelled, dashing to the base of the telegraph pole. “This way, follow my voice!”

 

She followed without hesitation, though the roof was starting to cave in and Macavity was just a few yards away. Jerrie didn't care if he heard them, all he cared about was getting her to the ground in one piece. He called to her, instructing her carefully on where to put her feet, until she was halfway across the telegraph wire.

 

The pole holding the wire had managed to remain untouched by the fire until that point, but the flames that had been threatening to jump from building to pole finally made it. The fire climbed the pole quickly, and the wire quivered in the air. Rumpleteazer froze, hanging on for dear life.

 

There was only one thing to do.

 

“Jump!” Mungojerrie called to her. “I'll catch you!”

 

…..

 

“You caught her?” the silver tom gasped.

 

For the first time, he actually looked impressed. Mungojerrie shrugged.

 

“It's not exactly 'catching',” he explained. “If you catch someone falling from that height you'd break your arms, and maybe your spine. It just looks like you're catching them....it was a trick we used to do in the circus.”

 

The trick was to swipe out your arms to interrupt the fall, throwing the falling person out to the side to reduce the impact. They'd only ever done it from a height of ten feet or less.

 

…..

 

She jumped off the wire as soon as the words left his mouth. A little part of him that wasn't taken over with panic was touched that she trusted him enough to blindly leap from a great height on his say-so, while the rest of him watched her plummet in a state of rigid readiness.

 

_Don't reach out 'til you see the whites of her eyes._

 

Her eyes were closed.

 

_Don't let her land directly on top of you._

 

The wind was pushing her off trajectory.

 

He grabbed her just as she was about to smash into him, flinging her out of the way to where she crashed, winded but otherwise unhurt, into some rubbish bins. The impact shuddered through his body, sharp pain radiated all along his outstretched paws and forelimbs, but it barely registered with him. She staggered to her feet and he crawled over to her.

 

“We need to get out of here,” he said.

 

She nodded, but then doubled over with coughing that sounded like she was trying to dislodge something large and sharp. He figured he would have to carry her, like he had before, but as soon as he put his front paws on the ground he realized he was in no state to carry anything.

 

Behind them, the fire brigade was just arriving as the building was finally collapsing. There were only a handful of cats still around, some of them queens, but no sign of Macavity. Humans were bustling around nearby, which always made Macavity jumpy. They could afford to wait, for a little while.

 

It was approaching dawn by the time they had collected themselves enough to get out of there. Mungojerrie had to lean heavily on Rumpleteazer to keep the weight off of his forelimbs, and they stopped frequently to let Teazer cough and catch her breath. She could open her eyes now, but they were red and streaming and she could barely see what was in front of her.

 

“Did you know it was me?” he asked, when they took a break beside a canal.

 

“Of course,” she said, mid-cough. “You used dynamite, didn't you?”

 

“Gelignite,” he corrected.

 

“Thank you,” she said. “That place...the queens....”

 

“S'alright,” he cut across her.

 

They wouldn't speak of it again, for the longest time.

 

…..

 

When they arrived at the junkyard, nearly two days after the fire, most of the cats had gone to their dens to sleep bar the big silver tom, who was standing guard from an old wrecked car. He took one look at them and called for the chubby queen, and without even being asked who they were and what had happened to them they were hustled into the queen's den, cleaned and bandaged and soothed as though they were kittens. She set Jerrie's twisted paws with makeshift splints and rubbed Teazer's back as she brought up seemingly every speck of smoke she'd inhaled.

 

“Poor dears,” the chubby queen kept saying, shaking her head all the while. “What a state, poor things!”

 

She put them to bed and Mungojerrie slept more soundly than he'd ever slept in his life, more soundly than when circus performing left him worn out and aching, more soundly than the hours after long sessions of keeping watch for predators in the wilderness, considerably more soundly than any day or night in Macavity's clutches. When he woke, the silver tom told him he had some questions, and Rumpleteazer was still asleep.

 

“And...now we're here,” he finished, looking down at his paws.

 

He heard the silver tom let out a long-held breath, and they lapsed into silence.

 

“That's...quite a story,” the silver tom said at last.

 

Jerrie just nodded, because there was nothing more to say.

 

“I'm glad you managed to find your way here,” the silver tom continued. “At least so Jenny could give you some proper care...and as far as we can see your account has been truthful...”

 

_How would you know?_

 

Up until that moment Jerrie had managed to miss the two cats sitting on a ledge above the door, unmoving and staring down at him. There had been an odd prickle at the back of his head the whole time he was telling his story, but he had dismissed it along with all his other aches and pains. Now, for some strange reason, he had a feeling it was connected to those two. Their eyes were fever-bright, unblinking.

 

“Under normal circumstances our leader would be the one to decide on whether to let you stay,” the silver tom sighed. “But he's not here right now, and in any case we have only take cats in on rare occasions...”

 

_Isn't this rare enough for you?_

 

“Munkustrap,” the timid queen suddenly spoke up, having come back inside without Jerrie noticing. “Where else are they supposed to go?”

 

“That's not for me to decide,” he answered, staring pointedly at Mungojerrie. “Did any cats die in the fire?”

 

“I don't know,” Jerrie said with a helpless, exhausted shrug. “I didn't set out to kill anyone, I just needed to get her out...it was the only way.”

 

“Live by the sword, die by the sword,” the queen said with an edge of venom. “That was one of his favourite phrases...Munkustrap, if there were any innocents in that building I think these two kittens were it.”

 

“Be that as it may,” Munkustrap cut in sternly. “They chose to endanger the lives of other cats. I don't think we can overlook that...”

 

“Just take her then.”

 

It was enough to make them all stop and turn towards him, wide-eyed.

 

“Excuse me?” Munkustrap asked.

 

“Just take her,” Jerrie repeated. “I was the one who set the fire, she didn't have no part of it. You can let her stay, can't you?”

 

It hurt to even say the words, but he knew it would hurt even more to drag both of them out of safety back into the unknown.

 

“What about you?” the queen asked.

 

“I'll manage,” Jerrie shrugged.

 

He wouldn't manage. He'd be dead in a week. Either Macavity or one of his henchmen or all of his henchmen would catch up, or he'd starve in some gutter because he couldn't dare to take a few extra steps, or he'd try and leave London and get snatched up by the first fox that spotted him.

 

“And if I were to ask her, what do you think she'd say?”

 

Jerrie wanted to lie, but he didn't have the energy.

 

“She'd probably say the same,” he answered.

 

…..

 

In the end, they were allowed to stay. It took weeks for them to feel truly safe, but they managed. The other cats were friendly, sometimes a little _too_ friendly, but never in a bad way. They took their lookout duties without complaint and shared food with the rest of the colony, as required.

 

Even so, that perilous first year of life had left its mark.

 

Munkustrap, Jennyanydots and the other seniors of the colony didn't approve of their thieving, but it was impossible now to stop. They'd become so dependent on their 'game' that going too long without invading a human space to take something made them feel edgy, almost scared.

 

“Could you limit it to one place, then?” Munkustrap asked, with the air of the long-suffering. “Having a bunch of humans traipsing down here looking for their lost property is the last thing we need.”

 

They agreed, and settled on Victoria Grove. Very few of the junkyard cats spent all of their time in the junkyard anyway, quite a few of them had human homes they regularly returned to, though none so well-heeled as the Grove (with the exception of Bustopher Jones, but he was so rarely in the junkyard he hardly counted.)

 

Victoria Grove was a place Macavity had always avoided. It was full of the supposed 'nouveau-riche' (always to be said with a sneer) who collected new things but had hardly anything worth stealing for Macavity's purposes. It suited Jerrie and Teazer nicely; there was always something interesting or strange or novel to be taken, and the furious shouting of the humans was always amusing.

 

They endeared themselves to many a clumsy housemaid or overworked cook; if anything was dropped or broken or spoiled they could blame it on the wandering cat. A young scullery maid names Gladys regularly saved them the best parts of the roasts to keep them coming back, as she was a particularly careless dropper of teacups.

 

Macavity would come looking for them, one day. He couldn't have gone so long without realizing that Mungojerrie was the one that had burned down his headquarters, and why he had done it. His other refugee, Demeter, had been allowed to live at the junkyard without his interference for a long time, but whatever power was keeping her, and by extension them, safe could only last so long.

 

They could run, that was always certain. At a moment's notice, if needed. They had enough food to last a week stashed away in jars along their den, and valuables they could trade for safe passage on trucks or trains. They modified the den to have seven separate exits.

 

They had no idea where they would end up, but as long as they were together, it didn't matter.

 

 

 


End file.
